Final Breath
by sassysango26
Summary: She had dreamed of fairytales, yet her story wouldn't end happily it seemed. Stuggling in the past, Nanami fights to find Kuromaro, gain a cure, and save Tomoe. There are costs to everything, and she is willing to take them all. (First chapter is sad, but there are more and it gets better.)
1. Chapter 1 Despair

Sometimes a person wonders at the end of a journey, why it finishes as it does.

The chill of the snow encased her, but she numbly walked on, her mind foggy with exhaustion and pain.

Concerning every story book she'd read, every tale she was told as a child, and every movie she'd watched; the ending always held a sobbing female, clinging desperately to a guy who claimed to love her endlessly.

It had always seemed both romantic and hopeful to her, a dream come true in her lonely upbringing. But it was a lie.

The pain of her injury grew too intense for her to stand and with a soundless thump, she dropped to her knees. Nanami's hands shook and her chest quivered with the force it took to draw air in, but she had promised. She had sworn to safe him and so she couldn't afford to yield to the cold plush bed of snow beneath her, not yet.

With another shuttering gasp, her left hand braced itself on the nearest tree trunk and her right knee weakly lifted so her foot could gain leverage. When she raised her head the world flew into a tornado of colors and she felt nauseous. How could she end the spinning? Her mind rummaged vainly for a solution but all she could think was to close her eyes, so she shut them but still felt the world shifting beneath her. Her head leaned into the rough bark of the tree for comfort and she tried breathing, focusing her mind on anything but the pain and the chaotic movement of the world.

The cold wood soothed her, and without realizing it she slumped into its chilled embrace.

What did she have to do again?

The thought reverberated in her skull like a bullet and her grasp on reality loosened further.

There was something, right? Something, extremely important.

Nanami opened her eyes to watch the world around her dance a spinning jumble of black, white, brown, and purple.

Purple.

The color felt important, more important than anything in her existence.

She racked her brain quietly, flashes of her life coming and going as she drifted on her finally bed.

Purple.

A hazy grey beckoned her and she obediently looked into her mind's eye, the color of silver.

What was purple and silver?

Her digits and legs from her knees down were too numb to feel anymore, there no longer was a dull ache in her lower body but her gapping stomach wound continually seeped.

Purple.

All at once she saw him, his silver fox ears swiveled as he listened indiscreetly to every noise she made, his skilled hands fixing her food, his face as she egged him on, and finally his longing expression as he saved her from her many troubles.

Purple, the color of his eyes. Silver, the color of her fox lover's hair. Her Beautiful Tomoe.

Nanami snapped her head too quickly to the side, falling face first into the snow as she retched.

The taste was copper and too frightened at what she might find, she blindly grabbed a small portion of snow, put it in her mouth, swished, spit, and pushed back up to a sitting position against the tree.

Her Tomoe- Where was he?

Her body shuttered, jerked, and twitched. The blood from her stomach, warm and wet against her right hand, oozed slower as she tried to recall where her fox was.

Something was important about Tomoe.

Nanami allowed her head to lull back, her eyes glazed and visibly pained as she searched the darkened sky.

His terrified face flashed across her mind, the black tattoos that branded him as dying, his strong words and the pungent odor of blood. It all flew back to her.

That's right!

Her heart lurched and her lungs once more struggled for air as she moved to crawl forward. She truly had to make it. If it ended her, she had to save him.

Her right hand fell away from her midsection as she used both to pull her form forward towards the edge of the mountain, towards Kuromaro.

After five long minutes of painful crawling she crested the hill and lost all strength once more. To weak to even lift her head and confirm her sucess, she laid breathing in choppy gasps, her face more than scrunched in pain, and her muscles useless. Certainly she would die. Misuki had warned her to return if danger found her, but she couldn't. She had to save Tomoe. And now here she was, bleeding to death in the ice. But it would not be a futile death.

Nanami's body shook violently, the pain of her wound was only a dull throb and her mind was hazing further than any time before but she only had one last thing to do.

Gathering her courage, she lifted slightly, sharply inhaled, and murmured the fallen god's name as loud as possible.

The wind whipped louder and the wood around her creaked in protest as the storm strengthened but Nanami would not be deterred. She called again.

Nothing happened.

Her head lifted higher still from the ice to survey her surroundings, searching desperately for his black form amongst the white.

"Kuromaro."

Her voice cracked from a strangled sob she refused to release.

"Kuromaro."

She hysterically whispered as that was all the wind she had left to use within her abused lungs. And still when nothing appeared, she drew another painful lung full.

"Please.."

Her voice rasped beyond recognition and her eyes filled with tears of anguish. Could he not hear her?

Nanami's throat chocked with defeat and her chest tightened in misery.

Had she failed him?

Her gaze frantically searched the charred remains of what once had been the fallen God's home.

His name a mantra on her lips as she dug her frozen fingers into the covered ground and pulled herself forward. Each breath used only to call out to him.

"Kuromaro!"

Her mind begged the fallen God to hear her, to see her, over and over.

"Please."

She whispered with her finally breath, too weak to even be heard over the whipping winds.

Nothing happened.

Nanami's sight blurred with tears and the warmth of the salt liquid coated her face when she realized how horrible wrong the end was, how terrible undependable she had been for Tomoe, and finally as she grasped that she would die vainly. A ragged gasp forcfully barreled down her throat, burning a trail as it went. She didn't care, why should she.

The burn in her chest grew to unbearable lengths and at the climax of the pain a hiccupping sob tore out.

She had failed him.

Her face slammed back into the snow, defeat, shame, and pain fighting for the lead, tearing her apart.

Why did she have to be so useless!?

Why was it going to end this way?

Her hand pulled into her face, furling and unfurling as she tried to recall his tender touches. His gentle yet firm hold.

Her Tomoe.

Nanami closed her eyes and tried to stiffly her weeping, to accept her bleak reality. But what killed her more than anything was her thoughts. Her useless frivolous thoughts.

To even ponder that she had been unsuccessful tore apart her chest worse than anything else. That she had other's depending on her success only added to the pain. And when she thought about her sweet, cocky Tomoe, her demanding, bossy, caring familiar leaving forever-

The burning in her throat returned and she tried to stop but it just keep coming, it moved like a it had a life of its own, traveling to her eyes and tickling her nose. The burning was just so great.

Her chest shook with the energy it took to reframe from screaming and still she pushed the pain deeper, basking in it.

If anything, she deserved this pain. She deserved to die in agony. The hurt continued to bubble higher and higher till a shreiking cry broke the night air.

And Nanami wondered vaguely who was voicing her own anguish. When the cry was heard again, and her throat burned with the crisp winter air she realized it was her screaming and she relinquished all control.

Another body shaking cry erupted from her and in the throes sorrow, Nanami curled into herself on that snowy bank.


	2. Salvation at a Price

_**Chapter two Salvation at a price**_

When dying, it's peaceful in the last moments. All of your senses have left, all your body is numb, the pain is gone and sometime if you're lucky good memories surface and float you to the after-life.

After suffering for what felt like hours in physical pain, Nanami had been given the gift of numbing warmth, and later still she was blessed with relief from her emotional turmoil but neither of these brought as much joy as the feel of strong arms holding her steadfast, of the silken strands of silver tickling her face, the warmth of his mint breath brushing her cheek, the husky rumble of her name on his tongue, and the balminess of his body pulled so tightly to her own that she believed them only one person. This, she noted, was the greatest pleasure she could receive.

This moment.

Her hands carefully slide up his sides and into his long hair. She'd loved his hair long, and she'd loved his hair short. But with long hair he looked more closely the beast he was, wilder, free-er, more Tomoe.

Her fingers reached higher still till they finally found leverage on his shoulders and she completely buried her face in his warm shoulder. His hair draped her body like a curtain in a window, it was only the two of them and she was so content to stay there she forgot he was only a memory.

It was slow, an ebbing of warmth at first. She could feel him pulling back to look at her and she willingly obliged him as long as she could return to his arms after.

His fingers had slip back from her shoulders to her elbows and she watched as his long otherworldly nails inched even further from her till they stalled at her fingers.

Words weren't needed in this place, she realized then what was happening.

The panic had clawed from her stomach to her throat, but she could do nothing, say nothing! He was leaving.

Nanami reached for his fading fingers, sure that through sheer will power and want she could make him stay, that she could turn back the clock of this beautiful memory of him hugging her in hell.

But when her fingers brushed his, when her eyes caught his amethyst orbs, his image rippled like water and his voiced carried on as the memory would have it.

"Why are you down her playing when you should be at the God summit, Nanami?"

The color of his silver hair dimmed to grey, the clear details of his face, his clothes, his hands, they faded, and finally his presence vanished. She was alone once more in the inky blackness of her mind.

"_I see, you have returned."_

Nanami startled at the sound of this deeply male voice in her eternity. She wildly searched the immediate area about her for the 'someone' who was invading but found nonentity, and when nothing happened after several minutes of waiting, she allowed herself to belief it was only her imagination.

"_For your lover, correct human girl?"_

The voice once more pulled her from the tranquility of nothing ness and instead replaced her numbness with a burning pain.

'Who was this guy!?'

Her mind struggled to place the voice, while trying to make sense of what she was experiencing.

"_Who I am is who you wanted. You have called and I have answered."_

The voice reverberated in her mind, and an icy chill returned to her arms and legs.

'What was this? ….Hell?'

'Was she such a horrible person in life that she had been damned to hell without trial?'

"_Human child, I tire of these games. Awaken."_

And as if a spell had been broken, she watched a flood of light over take her.

When her vision finally righted itself, she found herself groggily lying face up in the snow.

Her whole body ached horribly and a deep bone chilling cold had settled over her but she was alive.

Nanami twisted her head jerkily to the left, looking down at the remains of the still smoldering house of the fallen God and caught the first rays of the sun peaking over the faraway horizon.

'She hadn't died?'

Her face looked down to her right hand and mentally she commanded it to rise.

After a few painful tries, her arm did as it was told and she knew once she saw it, she had truly perished.

On her palm was the black miasma of the fallen god and an ungodly amount of dried blood.

Her eyes blinked a few time dumbfounded, before lurching to her midsection where a nasty scar the size of her forearm spread across her stomach.

'Last night there had been a gaping wound. How could she be alive right now? How could it be healed?'

Nanami's left hand slowly came into her vision then dropped back to her side as she took everything in.

'She was alive.'

'Her body still ached to hell but she was alive!'

Her clothes took this moment to whip about in the wind, reminding her of her destroyed garments but who cared!

She was alive!

With much effort she was able to push herself up and sit, the nip of the wind kind of painful on her freshly healed wound but more or less bearable.

'Now to find Kuromaro.'

Before she could even move, a heavy draping cloth was thrown over her shoulders and immediately warmth filled the small cocoon of clothing around her body.

"I am already before you Child. You called me, yes?"

Nanami's head snapped to where his voice sounded and found him calmly sitting not even ten feet from her. His black hair wild like the hair of medusa, and his eyes serenely held closed. For a moment she was stunned into silence before her voice, raspy and low broke the early morning silence.

"Yes."

Kuromaro flinched at the roughness to her voice, cracked an eye, and then closed it once more.

"You may talk to me using your mind, human child. It seems death has done a number on your voice for now."

He sighed tiredly before uncrossing his arms and reaching into his kimono sleeve.

"You have come for your lover correct? The fox?"

Nanami opened her mouth to speak but was quick to close it after receiving a glare from the fallen God. Instead she pulled the overcoat type cloth tighter around her and unsteadily answered him mentally.

'Y..yes.'

"I take it; you wish to take back the item he has traded correct?"

Nanami's eyes widened into saucers as Kuromaro pulled the hair pin she had given to Tomoe from his sleeve. Her head automatically nodded her agreement and her legs moved to gain leverage so she could approach him for it. But, before she could even finish getting her feet under her, Kuramaro took the hairpin and ate it.

She watched in apt horror as it slide down his throat and his hand came out with nothing.

A scream might have been forthcoming in this situation if she had had the voice for it, but as the fallen God so nicely put it, death had done a number on her vocal chords. So instead she had only crumpled back into a sitting position, mouth gaping.

'Kuromaro….. Ate…the hairpin.'

Her mind continually repeated the image of him drawing the ornamental hair piece to his lips, tilting his head back, and sucking the needle point pin into his digestive track.

Kuromaro licked his lips in delight, allowed his chin to drop back to a more relaxed state, and connected eyes with Nanami.

"Indeed I have little human girl."

Her mouth imitated a fish out of water in her exacerbated state.

'….W..why?!'

Kuromaro only grinned a soft smile, re-tucked his arms and hummed thoughtfully.

"Of course because this time is not your own yet. If you wish to heal the fox of his mistake, you must do it in your time line or he may not exist at all for you."

Nanami remained silent, her mouth still open in disbelief.

'What am I to do then?! He only has a few days remaining before he will die! We don't have enough time to find you and gain the hair pin back in the future. I've wasted all my time finding you in the past!'

Tears burned the back of her eyes from her mounting level of irritation, disappointment, and fright.

'What was she to do?'

Kuromaro remained silent, watching as she fretted with the edges of the cloth he had given her, as she worked around the hysterics of her mind. He already had a solution but it was one that would cost.

When finally he tapped into her mind and found her silently accepting of what he had told her he offered her the deal.

"There is a way to gain time just as there was a way to save you from death."

He knew her curiosity was peaked when immediately her eyes narrowed; found his and her voice crackled into existence once more.

"Tell me."

His eyes narrowed once more at her to remind her of her voice, but she was only excited at the prospects of saving her lover and he too could share that sentiment. He'd once loved a woman enough to kill, a taboo for one such as him, which cost him his Godhood.

Reaching into his sleeve, he felt the smooth bottle cork he was looking for and pulled, his eyes closed in concentration.

"This potion is special and will slowly remove the curse from your fox, but it is a transfer potion, not a cure."

Nanami inched closer on her hands and knees, drawn to the God's semi-good news, and the bottles purple liquid.

Her eyes were bright with curiosity and once she was only a few inches from Kuromaro, she sat back on her legs and pulled the cloth tight once more, waiting.

"You only need Tomoe to drink half, then provide the other half to the person taking the transfer."

Nanami leaned forward to receive the flask, but before she could touch it, it disappeared from her reach.

The Fallen God's eyes meet hers fully, his intense black gaze never wavering.

"If you are to use this, it must be on someone who can take the curse, someone who has longevity or Tomoe and the receiver of the curse shall die. The pain is not something most can handle. Tomoe is a powerful demon and suffers under this curse."

Nanami nodded once and opened her palm once more to receive the vial.

Kuromaro hesitated a moment, his eyes locked with hers as if conveying to her a silent message, before he relinquished the liquid into her company and stood.

'Thank you Kuromaro…..'

Her voice was like the sound of pure bells in his head, much different than her true voice right now. It was one of his gifts as a god to hear peoples' real voices, the ones they lock away in their soul. And this human child's voice was lovely. Perhaps that was why he felt the need to help her. His own female of choice had been the owner of a lovely inner voice as well. It was a rare commodity and should be cared for.

'- for everything.'

Kuromaro turned his back to the child, nodded his head once, and gave one last command.

"Return to your time child. You have much to handle."

Before stepping off into his thick black miasma and disappearing once more.

Nanami stood for only a moment longer, watching him fade into the horizon's light before closing her eyes and allowing the pull of the future to take her.

So, what do you think? Getting better? Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and please review to let me know if I need to fix something, if you hate something, or if you love it. Sorry this is reaching everyone so late, I had a few unexpected deaths happen in my family and then school.


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